


Autumn Song

by Metronomeblue



Series: imagine me & you- forever [8]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - World War I, Combat Medicine, Dreamscapes, Dreamsharing, F/M, Gen, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 11:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13880124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: Momo dreams of the wind, mostly.////Momo and Kensei meet in a war hospital.





	Autumn Song

**Author's Note:**

> This is 100% Peeps' fault and I blame her unreservedly.
> 
> also, the title comes from one of my favorite Yuki Kajiura songs, "my long forgotten cloistered sleep":
> 
> "if you find me crying in the dark  
> please call my name, from the heart
> 
> sing with me a tiny autumn song  
> weep me the melodies of the days gone by  
> dress my body all in flowers white,  
> so no mortal eye can see"

Momo dreams of the wind, mostly. Wide, white plateaus and unforgiving winds that blow her hair in her face, her clothes out of place. She dreams of the noise, the ruffling, rushing of air in her ears. A hand in hers, warm and strong and tight- like it will never let her go. She could have been blown away, but the hand tethers her, ties her down. She can’t see them. Her anchor, whoever they are, is always covered- a gust of sand, a tear in her eye, a lock of hair in her face. They hold onto her so tightly, and she wonders sometimes if they’re as afraid to lose her as she is to lose them. The wind is dream nonsense, probably, the sand and the storming sky, too, but the touch- the hand in hers- is real.

She wakes cold, and when she sits up, there is sand caught in the folds of her covers. Momo sighs, collects the corners of her top sheet and lifts it, letting all the pale, pale sand fall to the center, hang there like water in a leaf. She empties it by the back door- not the front, there are so many beds to pass if she wants to reach the front door, but the nurses have the back door, and that’s the one that doesn’t creak- and returns tired and frustrated. She pushes her hair from her face and runs a gentle hand over the tender skin at the back of her head. Her soulmark: her constant companion, and the most likely cause of these dreams.

Few people she knew had had their soulmark from birth- Toshiro had felt the ripple of smoke up his arm the day she was born, and the harsh spike of untranslatable glyphs over his thigh when he was twelve. Gran had gotten hers the day she’d met their grandfather, a feeling like breathing in winter that remained in her lungs even now. As such, Gran had insisted on checking it over every year or so, and the increasing clarity of the mark had satisfied her in time.

“They’ll be a fighter,” her grandmother had sighed, examining it. Small and energetic, Momo had wished she could see it, but splashed as it was over the back of her head, there weren’t many ways she could, even if she shaved it down to the scalp. Gran and Toshiro had traced it out for her a few times, a bright, blood-red handprint that curled around the back of her skull, cradled it in eye-catching brightness. “You’re just lucky you’ve got a healthy crop of hair up here,” she added, ruffling it as she spoke. “If poor Toshiro had gotten something like this, you’d see it for miles under that white hair of his.”

“If I’d gotten something like that, you’d never see me at all,” he muttered flipping a page in his book. Momo made a face at him, and he returned it without looking up.

“Behave,” Gran warned them, and they settled down reluctantly.She clicked her tongue fondly and pulled another strand of hair away. “Definitely a fighter, this one. Hands that strong,” she rested a fingertip in the red area that Momo supposed must be her soulmate’s fingertip. “Hands that large. They’re made for fighting. You’d best be careful, little one.” Momo leaned forward, away from her hands, and pretended that she didn’t care. “Fate must be cruel indeed, pairing a sweet thing like you with someone like that.”

“Maybe,” she’d said, with a strained smile. “But who knows.”

It stung, though, to hear that she was a sweet thing, to hear that she was little. Momo loved her grandmother dearly, and her brother, too, and she thanked fate every day that she could feel his cool touch at the daffodil on her wrist. But they didn’t know her. They knew enough of her, the kindness and the calm, the joy and the laughter, but they didn’t know her heart.

She doesn’t know her heart, either. Not yet. But it’s half someone else’s already, and that half is all fire.

Even now, Momo’s hand shuffles through her hair, threads it between her fingers so it can rest in the red of her mark. It’s always warm, warmer than the rest of her skin, a blazing handprint on the back of her mind.

She supposes, lying back down, hand pressed hot and familiar to the back of her head, that that’s why there are two of them to share it.

The next day they get in a woman with bright green hair. She’s stepped on a land mine, and it’s a miracle she’s even alive, let alone that she got away with so little damage. She’s one of theirs, Japanese falling half-coherent from her mouth and leg blown half to hell.

“Hey,” she slurs, as Momo injects her with morphine. “Did you find my leg yet?”

“Not quite yet,” Momo assures her, patting her muddy shoulder. “But they’re looking for it even as we speak.” The doctors buzz, tossing words back and forth, pulling out knife after knife, shaking their heads at every one. “Sleep now, alright?” She nods sleepily, head lolling back.

“Mmkay, Kensei. I’ll do that.” The other nurses trade looks between tasks, and Isane gives her a frightened look.

“Who’s Kensei?” Orihime asks, handing Captain Unohana a terrifyingly long bone saw.

“We could check with Home Base,” Isane suggests, and that’s the end of that.

This Kensei’s full name, Momo finds, is Captain Muguruma Kensei, and he’s not far behind their mystery guest.

“Where is she?” He barks, blowing through the front door like an unwelcome storm. “Lieutenant Kuna, green hair, landmine wound.” His fist slams down on the desk as a mark of urgency, but all it does is drive the poor clerk into a fearful stammer.

“S-she’s in the ward,” Hanataro replies, blanching, and Momo steps between them with a sigh. She’s not much taller than Hanataro, but he was a stretcher-bearer on the front lines before coming here and his nerves didn’t so much shake as oscillate wildly. She looks up at the man, narrowing her eyes to match his, straightening her back and frowning as disapprovingly as possible at him. He’s worried, she knows, and angry and afraid, but he’s also rude.

“She’s lost most of her left leg below the knee,” Momo informs him, pulling the woman’s intake sheet from the desk. “Captain Unohana is amputating the rest and tying off all major arteries and veins in order to prevent her from bleeding out. We’re currently busy saving her life, so if you would kindly stop interrupting and scaring everyone, you’d be doing us all a favor.”

“I need to see her,” he tells her in a tone that says he hasn’t faced much opposition thus far.

“Impossible,” Momo tells him, updating the woman’s forms with what she’d gotten from Orihime and Isane. “She’s in surgery right now.”

“I need- shit. Is she going to be okay?” He asks, glare fading into an expression of nauseated worry and fear. Momo closes the woman’s folder, now marked off with her name, and looks at him evenly. He’s breathing hard, disheveled, spattered with mud and blood and demanding to see a woman whose leg had been blown off.

“We think so,” Momo says, more softly. “The best thing you can do is sit and wait and get cleaned up. So please,” she says, and a tinge of exasperation enters her voice. “Sit.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding absently. “Yeah.” He collapses into one of the chairs beside the door, pained and preoccupied, and she sighs, because she knows what she’s going to do and she hates it.

She does it anyway, though. She fills a bowl with warm water, grabs one of the less dirty rags from the counter, and kneels beside the man’s chair. He doesn’t look up at first, doesn’t even so much as blink in her direction, so she rests a hand on his knee. It’s gentle, light, barely even a touch. His head snaps around, eyes wide and fists already curling. Her hand lies where she put it, though, and she looks back at him with a steady, even, gaze.

“You look like you could use some help,” she offers, and he looks back at her for a long breath, eyes wide and face blank, before he softens, slumps, nods. She wets the rag, wraps one corner around her fingers, then sits up on her knees to reach his face. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees where she can reach him better. The wet cloth rasps a little on his cheek, silver stubble just barely glinting on his skin, and she presses harder to move the blood even as it dries. It’s splattered, sprinkled, over his face, and she sees him less and less as a threat and more as a man as the blood comes away, as the dirt is cleared. She feels the hard line of his jaw, the soft flush of his cheeks, the weary arch of his eyes under her hand. The water turns pink, brown, dark with her efforts, and eventually he has to catch her wrist to stop her.

“Thank you,” he says, voice rough and thick with fear and disuse. His hand is hot around her wrist, but gentle, and she feels small with how easily he grasps her. His fingers almost meet, but his touch is soft and tired, as though she’d brushed away his frantic energy along with the blood. “You don’t have to keep going.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, with a small smile. He shakes his head, lets her pull away with loose fingers.

“Don’t be,” he replies, and he runs a hand over his eyes. “It was kind of you. Especially after I was so…”

“Rude?” Momo suggests, and it forces a small, bitter bark of laughter from him. “You were looking for your friend. It’s understandable, even if you did scare poor Hanataro half to death.” A sheepish frown flits over his face and then disappears.

“She’s my sister,” he corrects her with a soft voice. “Mashiro is my sister.”

“So her name is Mashiro?”

“Mashiro Kuna,” he nods. “Lieutenant Mashiro Kuna.” Suddenly self-conscious, he sticks out a hand. “And I’m Kensei. Muguruma. Captain.”

“Pleasure to meet you both,” Momo smiles. “It might have been nicer under different circumstances, but we can’t have everything.”

“No,” he agrees sadly. “We can’t.”

He stays for the next two weeks, and it’s a special kind of hell. Between Mashiro’s antics and recovery and Kensei’s alternation between taciturn and temperamental and almost kind, Momo is on uncertain ground in so many ways it dizzies her sometimes. 

“And if you need me again, I’ll be walking up and down the hall so just call me,” Momo assures the man in bed, who nods. She smiles and begins to turn away, but a screech echoes through the door, and she stops.

“This is stupid!” Mashiro cries from across the hall, and Momo has to stifle a laugh. She walks to the doorway to catch a glimpse of Mashiro tossing her crutches away. “Kensei you big dummy! This is all your fault, too! Stupid, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be here. All your fault!” She wails, flopping onto her back. She continues to complain, but Momo’s grin fades.

“Yeah,” Kensei says quietly, resting his face in one gloved hand, his fingers curling around his temple to hide his eyes. “I know it is.” He steps back, then turns, walks out into the hall. Momo looks back at her last patient, across to Mashiro’s wailing on the floor, then down the hall where Kensei’s footsteps still echo.

She follows him. Not very far, but far enough that Mashiro’s voice is just a faint whistle. He’s sitting against a wall, at the end between two empty rooms, and he looks up at her with red-rimmed, tired eyes. He’s crying, she can tell, and when she doesn’t say anything, he calms. His shoulders loosen, he stops holding his breath.

“She’ll be okay,” Momo says, and he wipes his eyes, sniffs, nods thickly. “Lieutenant Kuna is… She’s stronger than she lets on.” They both crack a bit of a smile at that, the knowledge that Mashiro will undoubtedly be calling for sweets and a pair of crutches come morning, regardless of her personal state.

“She shouldn’t be out here,” Kensei sighs, running a hand through his hair, tousled with worry and repeated movement. “It’s my fault. I should’ve told them to send her back, I should have forced her to go home, but-”

“But she wanted to fight,” Momo finishes, and there’s a wistfulness in her voice, a sort of yearning that Kensei feels in his bones like fear, and part of him already knows. Somebody has told this girl ‘no’ one too many times.

“She wanted to follow me,” he corrects her, but the look in her eye doesn’t change.

“She’s a grown woman,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “It’s good for you to let her make her own choices.”

“Even when those choices are stupid?” He asks wryly, and that does shift her expression from distant to amused.

“Especially then. How else will she learn what land mines are?” There’s a sort of wry exasperation in her voice, well-worn from many attempts to explain to Mashiro that she should be sure never to step on an explosive again. That kills the smile in his eyes, though, and he looks down at his hands again, black gloves stark against the pale floor, the pale walls.

“She shouldn’t have to.” His face is shuttered again, dark with a swirl of emotions neither of them is quite certain of.

“She decided to come,” Momo says, and it’s not blame. Not blaming him, not blaming Mashiro, it’s- it’s the absence of blame, and it’s something he hasn’t heard in a long time. “She doesn’t seem to regret it.”

“I do,” he says, and she frowns at him questioningly. “Regret coming. I do. I regret it.” He pauses, bites his lip. “I don’t want to fight this war,” he admits, his voice soft with shame and with weariness. “I’ll fight it ‘til the end, but I’ll hate every second. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t ask to fight it.” He looks away, but he can feel her watching him, can feel the weight of her gaze on his shoulders like it’s physical.

“Maybe it’s not your war to fight,” she says quietly, and Kensei feels time stop. The world is silenced, his heart ceases to beat and for a moment, all that he can hear is _it’s not your war_. He takes a single juddering breath, and looks at her.

“You’re the first person who’s ever said that to me,” he admits, and her face softens again, her eyes close. He looks away. “I’ve always been good at fighting. I’ve done it all my life. Wouldn’t stop. Made a name for myself by doing it. But the minute they put me in the real fight all that anger just… left me. I kept going. Why did I keep going?” He rubs his hands over his eyes, and the look on his face is half anger, half anguish.

“Because you’re not cruel enough to make someone else do it,” she says, and it’s as comforting as it condemning. “I am, though,” she says, in the same, soft voice. “Please keep fighting, Captain. Please stay alive.”

“You’re going to ask that much of me?” He asks, and surprise as much as admiration fills him to the point where he can feel his ribs crack, his lungs contract. She looks at him, and the dark sheen of determination in her eyes pierces through him. She’s warm, he realizes. Warm like fire, but as cold and set as ice. Her eyes don’t waver, don’t change. Neither does she.

“Yes,” she says flatly. “Because you’re a good man, and you’ll do it.”

“I’m not as good as all that,” he murmurs, and she lets out a short laugh at him, breaking that steely look. She laughs gently, as if against her own will, her shoulders pushed forward and her eyes closed. He finds he likes it as well as the ice.

“Well, then,” she says, still smiling. “Be better and prove me right.”

They avoid each other for a while after that, something too raw and too fragile between them to risk breaking it in daily annoyances. Kensei gets his orders the next Sunday, disappears for a day, and returns with a gaggle of extraordinarily strange people.

“This is Lisa,” Kensei tells her briskly, gesturing at the woman behind him, who looks something like a female praying mantis dressed like a friendlier creature. She’s no more polite than Kensei, but no more rude, either, which is good for Momo. She’s almost gotten fond of his moods. He tells her that Lisa will remain with Mashiro, and that she’s to keep watch.

“I’m leaving,” he says, and the way he looks at Momo is like a drowning man looking up at the sky. Lisa eyes them both suspiciously. Silently.

“You’ve been reassigned?” She asks, and he nods silently, teeth grit and eyes soft.

“I’ll be back,” he says, and it sounds like a desperate promise he can’t keep. Momo smiles anyway, smiles just as soft and sad as before.

“I know you will, Captain.”

He doesn’t see her again, for a time after that, and then he’s waiting to leave, out in the cold with the rest of them, Shinji’s outraged squawk rising above Lisa’s even, caustic voice. He’s seeing them strangely, everything muffled and pale. The world is distant, as if he’s been numbed to it, his heartbeat keying up in his ears, higher and higher, faster and faster. He can hear the others as if they’re underwater, a faint and rounded cacophony.

“Captain,” a smaller voice calls, and he hears  _her_  clear as anything. He turns, and she’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed against the cold, white uniform thin in this weather. Snow drifts around her, catches in her hair, and he thinks it’s a good thing he can’t move or he might do something stupid. She  can move just fine, however, and she shakes her head once before striding out into the cold to meet him. Kensei stands and watches as she moves, mind running like a projector, film ticking around and around, drawing closer and closer until she reaches him and stops, less than a foot between them. This close, he can see her shiver, can see the way her breath spirals from her lips like smoke, the way her bottom lip trembles in the cold and the way she hunches in to beat it back. He wants to hold her closer, to brush the snowflakes from her eyelashes, to wrap her in his coat and insist she keep it.

He says nothing.

She takes his hand in hers, and his chest feels tight because her hands are so goddamn small, she’s so goddamn small, and she’s looking up at him, all warmth and steel and trust.

“Prove me right,” she says again, her eyes narrowed and searching. Her hand is curled around his, and it’s warm, it’s hot, it’s burning. Her fingers tightens around his glove, and she leans in closer. “Captain, please. Prove me right.” Her other hand brushes his cheek, and then she pulls away, her eyes softer than before. The feeling of her hand leaving his is painful. It’s harsh, somehow, like tearing a part of himself away, and he gasps as the last nerve goes cold. His breath puffs like mist in the air, rising, billowing, soft-edged and unnatural as he breathes heavily in her wake.

His hand prickles, burns, throbs. It’s as if someone shoved it into a fire, a sudden, blinding pain, and he hisses, reaching down to pull off his glove to examine it. The cold air soothes it some, washes like gentle morphine over the expanse of it, numbing his fingertips and his wrist.

His mark wraps blood-red and stinging over and around his palm, curling to the back of his hand in places. It aches, now, strangely and unexpectedly, and he stares at it, unamused. He doesn’t understand this pain, now of all times, but he wants it to stop. He has enough to worry about. He tries not to imagine, not to dream for even a moment, that it’s the imprint of her hand in his, her small, deft fingers wrapped like a vice around his own. He dares not hope that he could ever be so lucky, but, as he shoves the black glove onto his hand, he wishes.

He  _wishes_.

**Author's Note:**

> this feels... not quite in character somehow, but I'll work on that


End file.
